Archaea 2: Janis (18 page)

I moved to the inner door, and stood off to the side, as Jane crouched and sighted down her barrel. She nodded, and I slid the door open and moved back away from the door. She nodded again, and I took a lean on the door and looked down the corridor.

“Yak, be advised, dropship is landing now.”

“Copy”, I said into comms. Time to go.

I waved Jane up and we moved towards the end of the hall, moving low and stepping light. Jane dialed in her suit mimetics to match the corridor, and I followed her lead, though as exposed as we were it wouldn't much matter.

The stairwell was empty, dimly lit with grate flooring on the stair treads, casting stripes of shadow along the walls from the bare bulbs burning at every landing. A quick glance at my holo showed the patrol moving closer. I pointed down, and took point as we stepped down the stairs.

We had gone down one level, and started down the next flight of stairs when a door opened three flights above us, and the patrol stepped into the stairwell. We took positions near the inside corner of the landing we were on, and watched him move down the stairs towards us.

Our mimetics were having a hard time keeping up with the striped patterns of light and shadow, but we looked pretty good. I took a quick glance over to Jane and saw that she had angled her chemser rifle into a block of shadow, and was holding it there, watching the man approach, one ringing step at a time. He came down a flight of stairs, and then exited the stairwell on the floor above us. We relaxed imperceptibly, and continued downward, stepping as lightly as we could on the ringing treads.

The doorway to sublevel three was locked, but Janis had us covered, and before I could even ask, it opened. We stepped through and into a darkened hallway. Jane took a sight to the left, and I took a look to the right, but nothing moved. I tapped her on the shoulder, and followed the hallway past her down to the left, towards the creche entrance. This section of the station looked more warm and inviting, more lived in. There was a brown carpet on the floor, and the doors looked wooden, though certainly they weren't.

“Jane, we are going to scare these kids to death if we come in there looking like this.” I whispered, looking down at my suit, shifting browns and grays matching the walls and floor.

“Hmm you're right Yak. How about this?” She dialed in a bright pink color for her mimetics, with a broad yellow stripe.

“Nice” I laughed, quietly. Not to be outdone, I dialed in a floral pattern, just like an authentic Hawaiian shirt from Earth. We looked pretty kid-friendly, I guess, as much as we were going to, anyway.

The creche was dark, a big silent room, with bunks on either side. Most of the bunks were empty, but the closest ones all had sleeping children in them. I held a hand up to Jane, and pointed at a bed that seemed to have the largest child sleeping in it. She nodded, and stepped over while I took a position near the door and tried to look as non-threatening as possible.

“Hey” she said, gently shaking the child on the shoulder, speaking as softly as possible through her suit speakers. “Hey, wake up... hey.”

The child woke up with a start and slid back against his pillow, eyes wide with fear.

“Easy honey, easy – we're here to help. My name is Miss Jane, and this is Mister Yak. We're from a ship called the Archaea, and we're here to rescue you.” She spoke slowly and clearly, and as brightly as possible.

“We need your help okay? We need you to help us wake up the rest of the children, so we can get you to safety. Can you help us?”

The little boy nodded, his wide eyes staring at Jane and I, not sure what to make of this, clearly not really awake yet. Jane took him by the hand and helped him up out of bed, and he stood there for a moment, scratching his head and rocking back and forth rubbing his eyes.

“What is your name? “Jane asked, trying to prod him awake gently, both of us aware that we were desperately out of time.

“My name is Tosh, Tosh Emerson, ma'am”, he yawned.

“Well Tosh, it's very nice to meet you. We need to hurry, okay? We are almost out of time.”

He nodded, and they started going around the room, rousing children one by one, until they were all huddled together, blinking and yawning, and clearly scared out of their wits.

Jane did great though, she was laughing, and playing, and sounded so bright and cheerful in no time she had them all lined up and ready to head out. None of them had warm weather gear, and there didn't look to be much of a chance we were going to find any. Hopefully the one-piece drab tan jumpsuits they were wearing would be enough.

I checked my holo, and my breath caught in my throat. We were out of time.

“Jane, we need to move out right now, right this moment.” I said on comms while stepping out of the creche and into the hall. She nodded, and turned to the line of kids watching her with big eyes.

“Okay kids, we're going to go for a walk. Follow Mr. Yak there, and I will be right behind you. Everyone stay close, and move as quickly as you can.” The kids nodded as she spoke to them, they looked absolutely terrified.

“I need you all to be brave, as brave as you can. We are here to rescue you, to get you off of Solis and to safety. Mr. Yak and I will not let anyone hurt you, but you have to stay calm, and stay brave. Are you ready?”

The kids nodded, and we moved out. I kept the holo up on my wrist, and watched in horror as a squad of six moved towards us from a few levels up. “Jane, incoming now. We need to get out of here...”

“Copy that Yak, moving up now.”

As I walked up to the stairwell door, I knew we were out of time. I could hear the tramp of feet as the squad moved down the stairs. I held my hand up, fist clenched, then waved back. Jane hustled the children back into the creche, and I followed, moving backwards with my eyes on the stairwell door.

We had to move fast. I knocked down a few rows of bunks, and we hustled the kids behind them, placing them behind cover. Jane talked to them in a low voice, telling them to keep their heads down, and their eyes shut. We took a flanking position just inside the door on the side we had hidden the children, giving us a clear field of fire across the room. With our mimetics tuned to the dark gloom of the room we were as close to invisible as we could get.

The footsteps approached the door, and the handle turned. The door opened towards us, giving Jane and I a little more cover, but we didn't need it. The men walked in as if they owned the place, which I guess made some sense. They weren't expecting a thing, and we had them cold.

“Hands in the air!” I shouted, my suit speakers set to maximum. “Let me see your hands!” I said, moving in. One of the men went for his sidearm, and I butt-stroked him to the deck with my chemser and then sighted down on the man next to him that was looking a little twitchy. “Put your damn hands in the air, or you will be fired on!” I shouted, towering over them and looking as terrifying as I could.

They all raised their hands and Jane moved quickly to disarm them. They all had binders, so one at a time, Jane grabbed their hands, kicked them in the back of the knee to drop them to the floor, and then bound their hands behind their back. Sudden movement caught the corner of my eye and I swiveled and sighted right down the barrel into the eyes of the dumbest man in the galaxy, and he knew it. I almost took pity on him, he was clearly too dumb to live.

I wagged the barrel slightly to the floor and he raised his hands back up and dropped slowly down. Jane moved over and secured him, and then we went through each of them removing any tech they had. Handsets, wrist sets, ear clips. We stripped everything we could find off of them and then I stomped it all into a glittering pile of broken shards.

“Who are you people?” one man asked, and I shoved him face-first to the floor. The rest of the men decided that speaking was probably not a good idea, and that was probably right. The thought of what they were about to do to these poor children just about had me burning them down, but the children didn't need to see that. I suppose I didn't really need to see it either.

“Captain, we have made contact with a six-man squad, and have them secured in the creche. We are moving out now, sir.”

“Copy that, Yak. Be careful and move fast, son.”

We did just that. One at a time, we hauled the captives to the side of the room, and then used another set of binders to clip their feet together. As soon as we had them secured, we gathered up the terrified children, and moved back out into the hall.

“What did you do to those men?” a little waif of a girl asked, her short blonde hair bedraggled.

“Nothing honey,” Jane said, “they are bad men, and we wanted to keep them from hurting you. They are just tied up, sweetie.”

“You should shoot them with your guns, Miss Jane”, she said, echoing what we were both thinking.

“Well, that wouldn't be very nice, and we're very nice people.” Jane said lightheartedly. I couldn't have agreed more, we were definitely nice people.

I had a fleeting thought that I was missing something as we were heading up the stairs, when the door to the landing opened and a man stood there for a few moments, jaw working as he tried to make sense of what we were.

Luckily, that was all the time I needed. I rushed him like he was a tackle dummy on the gridiron, just put my shoulder down and plowed him across the hallway, smashing him into the wall on the other side where he collapsed in a heap.

I heard a pretty solid crunch as I pinned him between my shoulder armor and the concrete wall, he was out like a light and possibly slightly broken.

I kicked his gun away and rolled him over, binding his hands and feet. We didn't have much time left, so I dragged him just far enough down the hall so that if someone opened the stairwell door he wouldn't be front and center.

We continued climbing, one more level to the exit. The kids were moving slowly and I realized none of them had shoes – they were wearing what looked like canvas slippers like common prisoners, and the metal of the stairs was hurting their feet.  I took two of the smallest children in my arms and bounded them up the stairs two at a time to set them at the landing.

“I want a piggy-back! I want a piggy-back!” one of the smaller ones squealed, as I set her down. Clearly the crisis of the moment hadn't really registered on her, and I hoped it never would.

I checked my holo, kicking myself for forgetting earlier. There was no one between us and the exit, though there were a number of hostiles moving in the vicinity of the landing platform.

“Jane, we're clear – let's move out.” I waved down the hall, and we set out.

“Captain, we are 30 seconds to the exit.”

“Very well Yak, we are inbound.”

Right then, a shrieking alarm blared out, and all the kids screamed.

*****

“Sir, an alarm has been triggered!” Pauli yelled back as we moved up the slope on lifters towards the station entrance.

“Very well Pauli, do what you can to cover them son.”

“Aye sir”

I started the turbines as we approached, the vanes spinning up behind us making a light whining hum as we sighted Yak through the blowing snow, waving anxiously.

I whipped the gig around smartly and cycled the hatch open while dropping lifters.

“Gene, warm her up, we are on our way home”, I said as Yak came aboard, followed by what sounded like a bunch of very cold, very scared kids

“Aye skipper, fly right.” Gene said immediately.

“Will do Gene, thanks. Pauli, status report.” I asked off comms, turning up the cabin heater.

“Sir, we have locked down every outgoing channel, and Janis is making a mess of their systems.”

“Nice. Let's make it cold in there, Pauli.”

“Cold, aye sir.” he laughed.

I swiveled my chair, and got my first look at our new passengers, a very full cabin of very little people looking at me with very wide eyes. I whipped on my most confidence inspiring eyebrow, and dazzling smile.

“Good evening kids, my name is Captain Dak Smith, and I am going to be flying us out of here tonight. You are all very brave, and I am going to need you to be even more brave for me okay?”

The kids all cheered and started talking at once. This was going great, kids love flying.

“Kids, Jane is going to come around and help each of you secure into what we call crash bars. They are going to hold you really right, and you'll feel the cushions push up as well, like a great big hug. These are hug chairs, don't be scared!”

“Sir, their drop ship is ramping up now, it looks like they are about to launch”, Pauli called back.

“Very well Pauli, keep me posted son”, I called down as I swiveled forward, then added on comms, “One more thing kids, it's going to get pretty loud in here when the engines start, and when we fly you will be tossed around a little bit – but don't worry, we're going to be just fine. This is going to be a lot of fun, like a ride!”

As I said that, I felt bad. These kids have never been on a ride, they've only seen the inside of this damned station on this frozen damn planet. Thinking about what sort of man could do this to another man, made me want to spit.

The turbines were ramping up as I slid us back away from the station, one of the last things I saw was a small group of men tumbling out of the entrance tunnel and getting in position to start firing, then I dropped the hammer and we screamed off into the night.